My grandfather, who’s name was Martin O’Brien, thought that Bridget would be a great name for my mother. My grandmother, an old Yankee named Anna Lewis, was having none of that. Bridget O’Brien, indeed.

But her dad won in the end. The name on her birth certificate may have been Marilyn, but he never called her anything but Bridget. So her siblings called her Bridget. And her friends called her Bridget. As a girl, pretty much everyone close to her except her mother and her teachers called her Bridget.

As I was growing up, I could always tell her old friends from her new friends, because the people she’d known from childhood all called her Bridget, or Bridgy, or Bridge. And these people, not surprisingly, showed a special affection for me, too. It was sweet then, and it’s sweet for me to think of now.